Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night

by Barbara Brown Taylor

All in all, there have never been a lot of people lining up to learn what God is not—especially not now, with so many self-appointed teachers volunteering to reveal the truth about God to anyone who will hold still long enough to listen. The only people I know who are interested in what God is not are those who have run through all the other answers and found them wanting. Waking up in the middle of their own dark nights, they have come quickly to the end of their intellectual resources—and their Sunday school resources too—so there is nothing to do but lie in the dark with something heavy on their chests, listening for a voice in the darkness that does not come. If that has ever happened to you, you know how fast it can make you ready to listen to anyone who can tell you what all that not-ness is about. John’s answer is not simple, but in the simplest possible terms, he says that the dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.